UTRdb and UTRsite: specialized databases of sequences and functional elements of 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs

The 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs may play a crucial role in the regulation of gene expression controlling mRNA localization, stability and translational efficiency. For this reason we developed UTRdb, a specialized database of 5′ and 3′ untranslated sequences of eukaryotic mRNAs cleaned from redundancy. UTRdb entries are enriched with specialized information not present in the primary databases including the presence of nucleotide sequence patterns already demonstrated by experimental analysis to have some functional role. All these patterns have been collected in the UTRsite database so that it is possible to search any input sequence for the presence of annotated functional motifs. Furthermore, UTRdb entries have been annotated for the presence of repetitive elements. All internet resources implemented for retrieval and functional analysis of 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs are accessible at http://bigarea.area.ba.cnr.it:8000/EmbIT/UTRHome/